(bright music) - [Matt] Experience the beauty of nature and art with Andrew DeVries.

Make art in Columbia County at Super-Stories.

♪ Oh, what a life ♪ - [Matt] And catch a performance from Elephant Back.

It's all ahead on this episode of AHA.

♪ Oh what a life ♪ - [Announcer] Funding for AHA has been provided by your contribution and by contributions to the WMHT Venture Fund.

Contributors include the Leo Cox Beach Philanthropic Foundation, Chet and Karen Opalka, Robert and Doris Fischer Malesardi, and The Robison Family Foundation.

(upbeat music) - Hi, I'm Matt Rogowicz and this is AHA, A House for Arts, a place for all things creative.

12 years ago on the 24th episode of AHA, I had the pleasure of featuring bronze sculptor Andrew DeVries.

This year I received a handwritten letter from Andrew telling me all about this beautiful new sculpture trail that he's created on his property in the Berkshires.

And so of course, I just had to visit.

(gentle music) - My name is Andrew DeVries, I'm a sculptor.

I've been a sculptor for 47 years now.

I cast my own bronze.

It's among a handful who do everything from the original sculpture to the rubber mold, to the shell mold, to the bronze casting.

It's a very long process.

(bright music) I grew up on a dairy farm south of Rochester, New York, quit school when I was 15 with the idea that I would be an artist.

And I made a deal with my dad that I would work with him for five years and then go off and be what I thought was gonna be a painter.

Saved my money, five years was up.

I loaded everything in the back of my truck, headed off and I ended up in a ballet studio in Denver eventually.

That was a real great gift.

The next two years, all I did was draw the dancers and try to paint.

I wasn't taking classes, I was working on my own.

And one night the choreographer, Arika she said, I think you should try sculpture.

And I went off to this small little community school, Emily Griffith in the center of Denver, put clay in my hands and it was like the angels came out of the sky.

That's, yeah, it's been my whole career now and will continue to be.

I don't plan to retire, but I am getting older and I do realize that I have to concentrate on the works that are really pulling on me on the inside.

Some people in the Berkshires know the casting studio burned in 2016.

There must have been a leak.

And I don't know what sparked the flame.

I was down in the pit with the furnace, thank God.

I didn't have a helmet on, thankfully, because if I had one of my plastic shields, it would have just burned the plastic right onto my face.

The neighbor heard the explosion.

He called 911.

They thought I was dead.

And Patricia, she's running across the field crying and screaming, and I ran toward her and grabbed her and picked her.

I said, I'm fine, I'm fine.

And the place is in flames.

(somber music) We were able to rebuild.

And this goes back to what's the good of a situation like that.

People started writing checks.

My dearest friend, Joshua, his chocolatier in Lenox, he came with a jacket because he had heard my jacket burned up and a box of chocolates.

And inside was a massive check.

And we had other friends.

You know, this is the thing, you know, I work so much by myself and you think you're doing good, but when something like that happens, 90% of the money came from people sending in checks.

One guy, he was an oil pipe welder out in Texas.

He sent a $500 check, he'd only been here one time.

(bright music) (feet stomping) I told you.

(Andrew laughing) This is my beautiful inspiration of every day.

And beauty inspires, I look at her and I say, I love you.

You're beautiful.

(gentle music) I always wanted to do the sculpture trail on this land.

It's 15 beautiful acres.

It's not been tilled for over a hundred years.

The middle branch of the Westfield River is running on the backside.

Westfield River is designated as the most pure water in Massachusetts.

I can drink out of that river.

So when the pandemic hit, we closed the gallery in Lenox, which was 20 years run, moved everything here, and people find it amazing.

(bright music) The sculpture trail is a half-mile loop.

There are over 40 up to life-size works.

Some are small.

And the whole idea of the sculpture trail is that we can make it both a nature preserve and an art preserve.

Seeing works in nature is a huge difference.

If you're viewing pieces inside, you think about theater, lighting, you know, you're lucky if it's near a window, so you have that natural light.

Outside, yes, it's the same piece, but it looks different.

You'll have rain on them or dew.

The other thing about the trail is of course the flowers.

It's a whole different feel that slows people down and make them really appreciate it.

And Patricia and I both hope that we can find an organization or some way to preserve it as a whole unit with both the nature and the sculpture.

It's open to the public Friday, Saturday, Sunday 11:00 to 4:00, and then by appointment if they give a call.

Take the time to absorb all the beauty with an open heart.

That's the best, open heart, open eyes.

Take something away that you didn't have before.

(gentle music) - Super-Stories is an amazing nonprofit arts center in Kinderhook, New York, focusing on community storytelling through public art, workshops and partnerships.

Jade Warwick recently spoke with founders Romero Davaro-Comas and Grace Lange to see what inspired them to create this maker space.

- Welcome Romero and Grace.

Welcome to A House for Arts.

- Thanks for having us.

- Thanks Jade.

- Super excited to talk everything arts.

We have a lot of passions and comments, so I'm ready to dive right in.

So let's start with Super-Stories.

So I guess paint us a picture.

What is Super-Stories and what do you guys do?

- Super-Stories is an arts education nonprofit founded and run by the two of us.

We have a all ages maker space in Kinderhook, New York where we host a variety of programs.

So we've got an afterschool experimental art club for kids.

We've got structured mixed media workshops.

We have an adult art club that meets monthly, and we do weekend free programs for families.

And so those are like a combination of these drop-in, open-ended maker hours where people can come in and just explore with materials and hang out with other creative people, and then more structured workshops that are led by us and local teaching artists, yourself included.

- Yeah, exactly.

I love Super-Stories, great space.

So you both started as studio artists.

Your career was in studio art and you're doing a lot of gallery work, things like that.

What was the moment you decided that you wanted your art to do more than just hang on a gallery wall?

What brought you into, I guess, more of the Super-Story space?

- Well, I think really just getting out there and painting murals and working with communities, at least for the mural aspect of the organization was what really pushed me to do that.

And our process is just trying to, for our mural projects, is to center the schools and the community members, the students in the entire piece and have them come up with the ideas and do everything from coming up with the sketch to actually painting the murals on the wall.

And in the I think three years that we've been an organization, we've painted 50 murals and worked with around 10,000 students, which is a lot.

So yeah, it's crazy.

But that's just the mural part of our program.

- You now work with people and communities so much, that's a main piece of your practice now.

Why is that fulfilling to you?

- I mean, I feel like a big part of my journey towards working with kids came from during COVID.

We were with our young niece and nephew every day, and I just got so into coming up with fun projects for them and realized how much I like being with kids and how much I like helping them bring their ideas to life.

And so I think it's just really wonderful to be in a position where you can empower kids to feel like their ideas matter and their ideas are worth pursuing.

And then I think what's been so fulfilling about our space is the community building side of it, which I didn't even expect when we got into it, but I've found that our space is one in which people who don't always go towards arts programming feel comfortable coming in and they get to bond as a family, bond with other families, get in touch with their own creative sides.

And I mean, you're an artist.

We all know that having that tool can transform your life, whether you come to it as a kid or come to it later in life.

And I think it's just so powerful to feel like we're able to give that to people.

- It's very beautiful.

- I think for me, it was starting to paint outside and then really working with communities and painting murals for and with communities and reflecting their stories, their values, the iconography that they wanted to see and them on a large scale.

So to see themselves and their ideas on a large scale was transformative.

And then they were so happy and that made me so happy and I'm like, I need to keep doing this.

- Now, do you see this a lot in the fine arts world or is there a little bit of a disconnect that you guys seen?

- Community work, I don't know.

I think there is overlap sometimes, but I do see that sometimes it's more prestigious or it's looked up more to sell in galleries and to do that kind of marketing stuff where working with communities is just so much more personal.

And yeah, I could see a divide, but I also, I can see the importance of it.

Everybody needs it.

- Yeah.

- Well, I feel like when I was more of a studio artist and going to art school, it seemed like there was a clear divide between art educators and fine artists.

But the more we've ventured into this world, I've really seen how many full-time professional fine artists are also teaching artists.

They maybe are not in a school every day, but they're doing workshops and they're sort of lending their expertise out.

And I think it's the kind of thing maybe you don't notice if you're not looking for it, but then once you start looking for it and seeing it, it's just really exciting because there's so many people doing cool things and there's just this openness with sharing their process with people that I didn't feel as much when I was just kind of in the fine art lane.

- Yeah, and now you guys are kind of like creating a movement too, because now you're having artists who are probably fine artists, studio artists too, look up to what you guys are doing as fine artists and studio artists who are working in the community and then being inspired by what you're doing and not feeling like they're stuck or siloed in one lane.

Like you kind of are inspirational for artists who are kind of up and coming like, I could do that too and not feel bad about it and not feel pigeonholed."

- Thank you.

I mean, I think it's valuable for artists to do for themselves just in how it opens your mind.

And I think the best way to realize what you know is to teach it to someone and break down the steps that are so second nature to you.

So I think even if an artist just does one workshop once and they're like, oh, maybe teaching's not for me, I think that's still a good experience for them and it'll feed back into the way they work.

- [Jade] Exactly, having different perspectives.

- Yeah, I agree with that.

And I think it's really what has been the question for me is like, well, what kind of legacy do you want to live?

Do you want to leave something where only one person gets to see your painting or do you want to work with hundreds and hundreds of young people and inspire them to be able to bring their ideas to life through a workshop or painting a large scale mural?

- Yeah.

So I've heard you guys say murals are like the quilts of the neighborhood.

How do you weave your very, these doodles, you have these kid-like doodles and figures and ideas.

How do you weave these all into one piece?

That's a lot, how do you do it?

- Well, you know.

Painting a mural is a lot of work.

It's difficult.

I think really the hardest part is determining the style we're gonna work in, and that is always determined by the community that we're in, whether it's a school group or a community organization with older adults.

We always start off with a brainstorming session.

So we always want to make sure that we are receiving imagery and sketches, doodles, lists of ideas that they want to see on the mural so that we can actually represent their ideas on this wall.

We then create a sketch and then after the sketch and after it's approved, we invite everybody from the community or the school to have an actual part in painting of the mural.

And that process kind of demystifies the magic that mural painting is because people see a wall and then the next day there's a mural and they get to learn the entire process.

And through that, get to see that they can actually do this.

We're just kind of like the vehicles for their ideas.

- Yeah, even if it's just like two paint strokes, they're like, oh my God!

- I painted that.

- They always say like, oh, I painted that.

I did that part, I did that part.

And it's awesome, especially working with really young students because they come up with amazing drawings.

- They really do.

It's very impactful work.

So with your maker space, when you run the workshops, it's like such a space of healing.

People can escape from the stressors of life.

As you said, parents get to bond, children get to make new friends.

How do you foster that environment?

How do you create that environment of community and connection?

- I mean, I think the first way is just by being welcoming, having a majority of our programs being free and having them be drop-in so people don't need to sign up.

People just feel really welcome coming in and they feel like anybody is invited and welcome in the space.

Everything we do is based on a philosophy of art education that's called Teaching for Artistic Behavior, which is about promoting the habits of professional artists rather than just trying to master skills.

So we're teaching kids or we're making space for kids to experiment, to try, to fail, to problem solve, to figure things out for themselves and to make all of the decisions about what they're making rather than trying to replicate a sample that we've done.

Even when we have workshops where we're teaching a specific process that does require following steps, we make sure that everyone knows they can kind of take those steps and do what they want with it.

And I feel like the power there is that, first of all, it's a space where people feel like they just get to make decisions.

And for kids especially, that's huge and empowering.

I also think it invites in the kinds of people who maybe don't make art that looks like the teacher's sample, right?

So they just feel like this is a space where they can be successful and anything can be considered art.

And I also think it promotes transferable skills outside of the art world, Like persistence, planning, time management, reflection, collaboration, all of these things that are not art specific that are just going to help kids grow up into well-rounded creative people.

- Yeah, and teaching them how to play, being playful.

- Yeah.

- The joy of play.

- Totally, and no one's judging what they're making.

I'm not grading things.

We really try not to say like, oh, that's really good.

Rather, we ask questions like, how did you come up with that?

How did you do that?

And I love when a kid asks you to do something for them.

We're like, oh, actually, I feel like you can figure that out yourself.

And then when they do, they're so stoked on it.

It's just like, it's really cool to be able to create a space for that.

- They're like, I did it.

I was able to do it.

It's amazing to see that every single time.

- And they come up with the weirdest things too.

- It's awesome.

- And it's just so much more interesting than a bunch of kids copying my painting of a dog, right?

And there's total value in learning how to follow instructions and copy a painting of a dog for sure.

But the things they make are just so unexpected and weird.

- Yeah, I can only imagine.

- Because it's like young people making this stuff.

It's amazing.

- It's pure imagination.

- Yeah.

- Yeah, we have bins of just basically garbage and they love it so much.

- I feel like they go hard in there, they really do.

Well, all right.

Well, thank you guys.

I've definitely got to stop by.

Folks are in Kinderhook.

Make sure you stop by Super-Stories.

Check it out.

Your workshops are free or low cost.

- So all summer long, we have free Saturday maker hours from 10:00 to 12:00.

Everyone is welcome to come in and get into it.

And our website, we have a calendar about other programs as well.

- But almost all of our artist workshops are also free.

- Oh, that's amazing.

- So you know, when you came, everybody also came for free.

- Yeah, very accessible.

Well, thank you for joining us, Ramiro and Grace.

I'm super glad to have you, and I'll have to stop by soon to visit.

- Thank you, Jade.

- Thank you.

- Please welcome Elephant Back.

(upbeat music) ♪ I aint proud ♪ ♪ Of the names I've told ♪ ♪ And the words I've called ♪ ♪ So what ♪ ♪ Makes me sit at home ♪ ♪ Get drunk all alone ♪ ♪ In the basement light with the radio always on ♪ ♪ I like it when I used to fall apart ♪ ♪ That time you didn't answer my phone call ♪ ♪ But baby we've grown ♪ ♪ Now we're into something new ♪ ♪ That weakened yours ♪ ♪ It might be new, it might be true ♪ ♪ I'd fight for you ♪ ♪ It might be new, it might be true ♪ ♪ I'd fight for you ♪ ♪ Thank you my love after all ♪ ♪ I know you liked it if I called ♪ ♪ How can you know me so well ♪ ♪ Oh so well ♪ ♪ Oh so well, yeah ♪ (upbeat music) ♪ I'm breaking down ♪ ♪ To the parts I really didn't know yet inside ♪ ♪ They always cut me down and make failure high ♪ ♪ In the basement light with the radio always on ♪ ♪ I don't like it when I used to fall apart ♪ ♪ Every time you didn't answer my phone call ♪ ♪ But baby we've grown ♪ ♪ Now we're into something new that weakened yours ♪ ♪ It might be new, it might be true ♪ ♪ I'd fight for you ♪ ♪ It might be new, it might be true ♪ ♪ I'd fight for you ♪ ♪ Thank you my love after all this ♪ ♪ I know you're right there if I fall ♪ ♪ How can you know me so well ♪ ♪ Oh so well ♪ ♪ Oh so well, yeah ♪ (upbeat music) (bright music) ♪ Somehow ♪ ♪ I found her ♪ ♪ She was hiding ♪ ♪ In the corner ♪ ♪ I used to sleep tall ♪ ♪ Till I met her ♪ ♪ Now her love is ♪ ♪ Is the truth ♪ ♪ I just want to make a fortune ♪ ♪ From this tune, yeah ♪ ♪ Maybe we can buy a rocket ♪ ♪ To the moon ♪ ♪ Oh me oh my ♪ ♪ Oh what a life, oh what a life ♪ ♪ Oh me oh my ♪ ♪ Oh what a life, oh me oh my ♪ (upbeat music) ♪ Somehow ♪ ♪ I found her ♪ ♪ She's hiding ♪ ♪ In the corner ♪ ♪ I used to sleep all ♪ ♪ Around this room ♪ ♪ Never thought I'd make it so soon ♪ ♪ I made a fortune from this tune ♪ ♪ Maybe we can buy a rocket ♪ ♪ So we can buy a rocket to the moon ♪ ♪ Oh me oh my, oh what a life ♪ ♪ Oh what a life ♪ ♪ Oh me oh my ♪ ♪ Oh what a life ♪ ♪ Oh me oh my ♪ ♪ Yeah, I'm gonna fly to the moon ♪ ♪ Oh me oh my ♪ ♪ I found my groove ♪ ♪ Oh me oh my ♪ ♪ Yeah ♪ (upbeat music) ♪ Oh me oh my ♪ ♪ Oh what a life ♪ ♪ Oh me oh my ♪ ♪ Oh what a life ♪ (bright music) - Thanks for joining us.

For more arts, visit wmht.org/aha and be sure to connect with us on social.

I'm Matt Rogowicz.

Thanks for watching.

(upbeat music) - [Announcer] Funding for AHA has been provided by your contribution and by contributions to the WMHT Venture Fund.

Contributors include the Leo Cox Beach Philanthropic Foundation, Chet and Karen Olpalka, Robert and Doris Fischer-Malesardi and The Robison Family Foundation.